Barracuda: Final Bearing

“One more thing. Where’s the admiral?”

“He haunts the place, hangs out in sonar or the crew’s mess. Guy works the crowd a lot. Never seen a guy with two stars shoot the shit with a third-class petty officer for a half-hour.”

“That shows you he’s got nothing to do. You know these riders. No responsibility, no worries, just leave the driving to ship’s company and watch movies, eat ice cream and sleep, maybe diddle themselves while looking at some of that Tahitian porn we picked up the last run.”

“If I had nothing to do I’d get about twenty hours of sleep. Well, the engineer calls.”

“You working aft tonight? We’re rigged for ultraquiet.

You can’t take anything apart, Voorheese. Hit the bunky, man.”

“Good point. Helm, Quartermaster, Mr. Porter has the deck and conn. See you, buttface.”

Porter raised his voice. “Helm, Quartermaster, log that Lt. Christopher Porter the third has the deck and conn for the midwatch on December 26, the watch in which we expect to put at least one Destiny submarine on the bottom of the Pacific.”

100 KILOMETERS NORTHEAST OF HITACHI, JAPAN

SS-810 WINGED SERPENT

Lt. Comdr. Hiro Mazdai heard the dressing-down that the captain was giving one of the junior officers. Mazdai was in his first officer’s stateroom, trying to concentrate on the chart of the offshore waters, but only hearing Tanaka raging at the officer about his failings and how weak he was. In Tanaka’s view everyone but himself was weak.

The captain was driven to find and sink the Americans.

For the sake of his own sanity Mazdai wished he’d get it over with, put them on the bottom so this mission with Tanaka could come to a conclusion.

seventy miles northeast OF point oshikahanto USS Piranha Bruce Phillips picked up the phone from a sound sleep.

He listened for fifteen seconds, said, “Man silent battlestations,” and tossed the phone on his desk, then headed out for the control room.

“Gambini’s got another one, skipper,” Scott Court said.

“Very well,” Phillips said, putting on a headset.

“Sonar supervisor, Captain, report status of the contact.”

It took only forty-five seconds for Phillips to plug into the tactical situation. Target One was a submerged Destiny class off the point of Oshikahanto, contact faint on narrowband, bearing nailed down at one nine seven degrees true, with little else known.

The limiting factor on the attack was the time for the Vortex missile to get ready. Within two minutes from battlestations being called, the missile was away. Phillips took a digital stop watch from his vest pocket. The time of flight of the Vortex through the water was less than five minutes, putting the target some twenty-five nautical miles away.

The explosion from this Destiny was as spectacular as the first, the noise easily audible to the naked ear. Phillips nodded, returned to his stateroom. Court looking after him.

The cloud of steam and vaporized iron of the Vortex fireball had once been the Destiny II-class submarine Winter Dragon. The crew of the Piranha would never know that. Piranha sailed on southward, closing on Tokyo Bay.

SS-810 Winged Serpent Comdr. Toshumi Tanaka sat at the Second Captain console in his stateroom, eyes bleary, dark circles under his eyes. He had stayed awake all through the previous night and on into the day, and was still awake now well after midnight. His consumption of tea had been a record, but nothing next to the amphetamines the Yokosuka doctor had given him. The uppers kept him going after all these hours, letting him stick at the console. He hadn’t eaten, slept or spoken to his crew for almost thirty hours, with the exception of Lieutenant Ito, who had come into the stateroom to give his view of the American forces’ deployment. Tanaka had ripped into him for thinking he could express himself any way he felt to the ship’s commanding officer. It was something that would happen on an American ship, he had said. Ito had never seen discipline before, not from his parents or his teachers or his previous commander, Tanaka told him. The younger generation was soft. Weak.

Which was why he insisted on standing watch at his own Second Captain. He believed he couldn’t trust the officers. The Americans had probably been lost while he was on the last sleep cycle. Well, not this time. He would not sleep until he had a detection on the screen.

He stared at the console as the clock ticked into the night.

USS PIRANHA

The third and fourth Vortex missile launches had gone off much like the first two — a faint narrowband detection on 154 Hertz on the towed array sonar, a sniff of the enemy, battlestations silently manned, the Vortex missile warmed and ready while the battlestations team was still relieving the watches, Phillips in the control room, the missile roaring away, then exploding, the shock wave and noise of the explosion deafening.

The last two Vortex missiles had blown up Destiny II hull numbers SS-807 and 814, the Godlike Snowfall and the Heavenly Mist.